Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (4 July 1804-19 May 1864) was an American novelist and story writer from Massachusetts who was known for his Twice-Told Tales, The Scarlet Letter, and The House of the Seven Gables. A scion of a prominent family of New England Puritan stock, many of his works were inspired by his own family's history, or from his own experiences.

Biography
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804 to a distinguished family of Yankee stock; he was the great-great-great grandson of Puritan settler William Hathorne (who arrived in Massachusetss in 1620) and the great-great-grandson of the infamous Salem judge John Hathorne. The curse which Sarah Good bestowed upon Judge Hathorne befor eher execution would become the basis for Hawthorne's novel, The House of the Seven Gables.

His father, a sea captain, died of yellow fever in Suriname in 1808, and Hawthorne grew up under the care of his mother's family. His mother's ancestors had a history with the "Scarlet Letter" which was branded upon them for incest, inspiring The Scarlet Letter. As a boy, Hawthorne developed an illness which rendered him an invalid, and all physical activity was banned during those years; during his bedridden years, he became an avid reader. In 1821, he left for Bowdoin College in Maine, but he was fined 25 cents for "walking on the Sabbath"; his school was known to be a strictly religious school. He returned to Salem after college, wherer he began publishing tales anonymously and working on his writing. Hawthorne self-published his first novel, Fanshawe, in 1828, but, almost immediately, he attempted to destroy all copies of it, as he was not proud of his work. In 1838, a friend gave him $250 to publish Twice Told Tales, and he began to publish his stories in journals. At the same time, he met Sophia Peabody, beginning a four-year courtship; she was chronically ill, and Hawthorne did not have sufficient income for them to marry. A friend went on to help Hawthorne get a job at the Boston Custom House, and he conducted his courtship with Peabody through letters. In 1841, he invested $1,000 in Brook Farm, an experimental commune, hoping that he could support himself and Peabody and still work as a writer. He based The Blithedale Romance on his experiences of physical labor and living on the farm. Unhappy with the physical labor involved, he left the community after three months and married Peabody in 1842.

During the 1840s, Peabody's helath improved, and Hawthorne began to get work writing for magazines. His reputation grew, but the family continued to struggle financially. Friends used their influence to get him a job as the Surveyor and Inspector of Revenue for the Port of Salem, and he earned $1,200 a year for the job; however, the change of presidential administration in 1848 led to the loss of that position. In 1850, he published The Scarlet Letter and sold 6,000 copies, although he only earned $800. Although the novel was critically acclaimed, Hawthorne felt that the gloom of the book adversely affected sales. His novel The House of Seven Gables, evoking the Salem witch trials, was received more enthusiastically, and he reissued some of his short story collections. Later, Franklin Pierce, a colleague of Hawthorne at Bowdoin, appointed Hawthorne the consul in Liverpool in 1853, and he remained there for four years. When he returned, he found it difficult to write, and he advised the editor of a journal to "say to your Atlantic readers that Mr. Hawthorne's brain is addled at last". He died in May 1864, and the continuing financial problems of his family led to his wife publishing his notebooks. His wife would leave for Dresden, Germany with the family in 1868, and she died in London in 1871.